COVERGIRL: Just shy of loving it. Full-on love the pale green python circling the action and the red-and-white-film-negative look on the right, but the monstrous face looks cheap. If that makes sense. Everything is as sharp and crisp as a new dollar bill except Sir/Madam Melty. Perhaps that’s the point. Let’s flip it open.

INSIDE STORY: Sir Melty. The skully melt-head is Maro, or is it Sune, or is Sune Maro and Maro Sune, or are they everyone or at least a lot of someones?

The last one. Sort of. Maro is a shapeshifter. He’s also, thanks to Falchion’s demise, leader of the subterranean band of creepy misfits plaguing Gotham. He sets his freak minions to the task of smiting Batwoman and the rest of the city and delivers Gotham’s kidnapped children to a scaly green She named Mitera.

Batwoman battles the creepy misfits, saving her DEO partner Agent Chase in the process. But because Batwoman stopped Chase from killing Maro/Sune, Chase thinks she’s a traitor and tells Detective Sawyer the same. As Batwoman watches Chase and Sawyer from afar, she vows she will save the children.

Also, Kate pushes her relationship with Sawyer forward, sharing pictures of her dead mother, dead sister, and estranged father. Sawyer does the same, revealing she has a daughter she lost in a custody battle.

Also, with some encouragement from Uncle Jake, Bette Kane wakes up!

RAMBLE: Beautiful issue. Art art art let’s talk about the art: the contrast between Batwoman’s black + fire red and Maro’s nighttime-teal + black; the similarities (significant?) between Maro’s palette and that of Undersea Chase; the spread with sea-green Llorona and her tsunami shriek splitting the Batwoman-saves-Chase segments; the page immediately following, all oily blacks and ocean blue-green.

While I admire Batwoman’s character and enjoy the (often overstuffed) story, I go ga-ga for the book’s art. Bonkers gaga. Lady Bonkers Gaga Overtired Overcaffeinated Batmom Getting Silly for the Art.

Also, not sure why, but this issue I kept noticing the cool sound words. (Is a word onomatopoetic if it’s mimicking a sound but isn’t a proper word? They are: